Happy Long Weekend

It's actually July 4, meaning it's Independence Day. Not just a long weekend, not just BBQ and fireworks, but the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. The date we thumbed our noses at England and said screw you!

No, not really. Honest, I do know my history. I have a degree in it and everything!

Here's a brief timeline of how the Declaration came to be. PLEASE NOTE: It took 4 days, FOUR DAYS! for congress to debate, change, add, subtract, and ratify the Declaration. What's wrong with us now?

June 12-27: Jefferson, at the request of the committee, drafts a declaration, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson's clean, or "fair" copy, the "original Rough draught," is reviewed by the committee. Both documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.



June 28: A fair copy of the committee draft of the Declaration of Independence is read in Congress.


July 1-4: Congress debates and revises the Declaration of Independence.


July 2: Congress declares independence as the British fleet and army arrive at New York.



July 4: Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence in the morning of a bright, sunny, but cool Philadelphia day. John Dunlap prints the Declaration of Independence. These prints are now called "Dunlap Broadsides." Twenty-four copies are known to exist, two of which are in the Library of Congress. One of these was Washington's personal copy.

July 4, 1776: 13 colonies become The Thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Signed— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis
Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis
Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris,
Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith,
George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney,
George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca,
Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe,
Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr.,
Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William
Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge,
Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton